Passive Branding Through Comment and Forum Marketing

First of all I want to be clear, this post isn’t about comment or forum spamming. It isn’t even really about linking at all, especially gaining link juice via blog comment anchors.

In order to grasp this concept, you should know all about branding and what it means to brand your company or name online.

Take this branding scenario:

Last week we wrote a fun little post for a client of ours that sells wedding dresses. The post took off semi-virally on Facebook and Twitter, which landed our client about 3000 unique visitors in just a few days.

Cool right?

It really was. The not so cool part is that our client did not receive any conversions from this little stunt. That is, no one bought a wedding dress.

The upside to this was the branding that occurred as a result of this traffic. Over 3000 people got to see my clients website & brand during this time. I would guess that of those 3000 visitors, most of them were women that are married, are getting married, or know of someone that is getting married.

That means that they are going to potentially remember this company when they are about to make a purchase decision, or possibly recommend them as well.

Getting People to Remember You

That is really what branding means, isn’t it? Having a good website, a great business card, a cool office, catchy t-shirts…that is all part of the branding process. You want people to remember you website, your t-shirts, and all that jazz. You want a good feeling to linger once they’ve moved on to their next thought.

Companies spend millions of dollars every year in branding in hopes that their customers will remember them when it comes time to buy.

Branding via Blog Commenting and Forums

Let’s step back for a second and focus on something most of you do every day: leaving comments on blogs and forums.

Patrick Coombe is the founder and CEO of Elite Strategies Llc. Patrick takes a hands on approach to managing Elite Strategies and loves to get involved with technical projects relating to clients inbound marketing needs.